A company that'd sell its soul for a quick buck - Lighter Pixel Zoo Employee Review

I think the studio’s cons come from two places: the abysmal pay and an upper management who are either unaware (Unlikely) of the company’s problems, or lack the desire and strength of will to improve. Let's not beat around the bush. The pay is bad. You likely spent 3 years in university only to get a job that, if you're lucky, pays slightly above minimum wage. And PZ will gladly have you hired for years without a pay-raise if you don't make a fuss to get it. If you do push for a pay-raise, it’s also likely that depending on the capricious mood of management, they might just ignore you, or kindly inform you that they’re out of work once your contract expires. (And leave your coworkers to fill the gap they’ve left.) My heart goes out to the fellow employees who requested a fairer wage in order to meet their visa income thresholds, keep a roof over their heads amid skyrocketing rent, or to be fairly compensated for the ballooning responsibilities thrust upon them due to a steadily increasing flight of senior staff. Because unfortunately I don’t believe it’s within the character of certain higher-ups to feel empathy over these things. They can put on a pleasant facade all they want but it has not once been reflected in their actions towards their employees. To anyone within their first few months of working there: If it feels like you don’t know how reviews and pay ‘work’, that’s because it’s purposefully left vague. Even if you have every justification, it will feel like trying to squeeze blood from a stone, and could cost you your job if you’re in the wrong person’s arbitrary bad-books. Overall, every issue with PZ is a matter of policy and decision-making failings, with wages being the one with the biggest direct impact on you, the worker. In addition to wages, artists are constantly misled, mistreated, and lied to as a direct result of shoddy leadership. As an example, let's take the treatment of the former 2D department; with the MGA merger, any projects which they had available to them dried up overnight. Management's response was to tell them that if they spent the time to learn and pivot into 3D departments, then they could keep their jobs. This was a lie. For seemingly no reason they pulled the rug out from quite a few of their loyal employees who could have otherwise used this time to find a new job. I fully understand the nature of the industry, but management couldn't even control their own selfish, fickle nature for the sake of an entire department which they had suddenly abandoned. I hope this remains the most pathetic thing I've ever seen in my career because I don't know if the bar gets lower than lying to employees like that. And yet despite this management have the nerve to act bewildered and betrayed whenever staff pursue better offers elsewhere. The severity of how they’ll treat you during your notice period is mostly dependent on how important you are to the company. The more your departure impacts them, the more readily they’ll make their displeasure felt. Like a petulant child. Several key members were subjected to bullying and frequent guilt tripping during their notice. PZ’s inability to retain senior and lead staff is no doubt the number one cause of their frequent pipeline and workflow issues. When a lead leaves, they’re replaced with a junior fresh out of uni, so the second most senior artist must step up to the plate. How is this preferable to doing the bare minimum to retain staff? As a final bit of warning, do not for even a minute make the mistake that the production team are your friends. They are not there to support the workers and artists. Those that *did* have been instructed not to, been told there is no more work available for them, or have otherwise moved to better studios. You and your co-workers are obstacles that must be dealt with so that they can continue sucking up to the upper management. If you have an issue it will only be solved if addressing it is easier than getting you to shut up. Best case scenario for them is that you keep your head down and don’t make any noise, because if workers aren’t productive, it’s their butts on the line. Producers are taught to be uncompromising and overbearing, which just burns out the artists and makes for more ‘problems’ to ‘solve’. Ironically this just supports the unspoken attitude in that department that artists are lazy and need constant jockeying to get work done. I think they’re also victims made to reinforce a toxic workplace culture that has been allowed to develop ever since the studio exploded in size a couple years back. If anything this makes it more frustrating because I see an inviting, vibrant office culture so easily within reach, if it weren’t for certain decision makers in the company eagerly deciding to shoot themselves in the foot with every chance they get.